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This chapter examines institutional responses to climate change-related movement. Although the issue cuts across several areas of international governance — migration and asylum, the environment, development, human rights, humanitarian aid and assistance, and security — each of which is represented by a number of different UN and other bodies, no international institution has a particular responsibility for governing it. The chapter examines the responses of the (former) United Nations Commission on Human Rights, the Human Rights Council, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights,...

This chapter examines institutional responses to climate change-related movement. Although the issue cuts across several areas of international governance — migration and asylum, the environment, development, human rights, humanitarian aid and assistance, and security — each of which is represented by a number of different UN and other bodies, no international institution has a particular responsibility for governing it. The chapter examines the responses of the (former) United Nations Commission on Human Rights, the Human Rights Council, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the General Assembly, the Security Council, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Organization for Migration, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change — in particular, paragraph 14(f) of the Cancún Adaptation Framework — in conceptualizing, regulating, and operationalizing protection and assistance strategies in relation to climate-related movement. The chapter concludes that there is a need to strengthen legal, policy, and institutional frameworks underpinned by basic human rights principles. If interventions are not sufficiently well coordinated and/or pre-planned, ad hoc assistance may become the default response of the international community. Interventions must be proactive, not just remedial, and comprehensive and multi-sectoral approaches are essential. A one-size-fits-all approach to climate-related movement will be inadequate.